There is much irony in the newest information that the population of Egypt is skyrocketing. Mostly a Sunni Islam nation, birth control is a touchy subject as babies are seen as a gift from god, and sex is strictly forbidden outside the institution of marriage. Boys are favored in the culture adding to the birth rate. Egypt is mostly a desert with its growing population dependent on the richness of the ever-diminishing Nile river valley. Egypt is a relatively poor country. Unlike much of the Arab world, Egypt’s landscape is not dotted with oil fields.The deck is stacked against a prosperous future for Egyptians as they continue to grow with a fertility rate of 3.1 per woman (2018) on average in an already water-stressed environment.
The irony comes in because Cairo was the scene for an unprecedented effort to discuss and debate the impact of population and its projected rapid growth on the countries of the world. In 1994 the UN International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) was held in Egypt’s ancient capital. It brought together 11,000 representatives from governments, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), international agencies, and citizen activists. But those various activists had different agendas. At the end, the conclusions had shifted focus away from the original mission of the conference. “The long international document from Cairo made no mention of the connections between population growth and the environmental ills of countries with growing populations” 1
It’s very unfortunate that the broader discussion of policies and education which could be implemented to flatten the hockey stick human growth curve, was sidelined at the conference. Feminist activists were successful in hijacking the mission of this massive effort and made the conference all about women’s empowerment. This was a downstream shift from the bigger upstream issue of how population’s rapid escalation negatively impacts the economy and the environment, to issues surrounding maternal health. Women’s issues are great to champion, but Cairo failed to address the broader issue of the pressure placed on countries when there are excessive demands on infrastructure and resources.
Looking back now in 2020, those activists who wrestled away the upstream mission of the Cairo conference cannot say with any honesty that this was a successful move. If their strategy was a good move, we would have seen better results. Using the conference host country as an example, in 1994, Egypt had 61.1 million people, and it has now reached 101 million with the last million being added in just the last 8 months. Now a country twice the size of California, has to manage 40 million more people and provide them with housing, clothing, education and jobs. How’s that decision to dodge the broader overpopulation challenge working? Not well at all. There is nothing empowering about overshoot. According to the United Nations,(Sept 2018), Egypt is facing an annual water deficit of around seven billion cubic meters and the country could run out of water by 2025. We have failed those who are now suffering under the weight of the menace of overpopulation. Ironically, we have failed the women those activists set out to protect.
Comprehensive governmental and non-governmental groups paired with religious leaders needed to come together 26 years ago to create a better future for all Egyptians. They were trying to do just that. If that had succeeded, we wouldn’t be witnessing such despair created by those who took up all the air in the room for what they thought was most important. I wonder how many of those activists have looked back to honestly reassess what they did. Imagine what could have been done instead of gambling away the future of the people of who live in the “cradle of civilization.” Political correctness cannot continue leading us around by the nose. It started long ago and continues to pile up its victims. We need to be less afraid of the implications of possible solutions, and worry more about the consequences of doing nothing, something we are really good at. Policies which encourage sustainable populations are easy to write but harder, much harder to pass. That is because like the activists at Cairo nearly three decades ago, we keep our focus downstream and away from the bigger issue.
This is not a problem exclusive to Egypt. Our failure to address overpopulation in a comprehensive way is an international crisis. Doing the right thing means listening to the earth, not the latest flavor of the month issue which squeezes out other voices in its arrogant misdirection. Ecological realism needs to be the new force guiding our way out of this ever-increasing mess in countries around the world, including and especially our own.
1 Beck, Kolankiewicz, The Environmental Movement’s Retreat from Advocating U.S. Population Stabilization (1970–1998): A First Draft of History Journal of Political History 2000.